'Twilight' fans face the saga's end

In October 2008, a month before the movie "Twilight" debuted, one of Vanessa Conradi's co-workers gave her the book and suggested she might like it.

"I asked what it was about and he said, 'Well, it's about this girl who falls in love with a vampire in high school,'" Conradi says. "And I said, 'That sounds so stupid.'"

A week or two later, though, Conradi picked up the book, started to read and could not put it down.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, this is the greatest love story,'" she says. "And then the obsession began."

The 36-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, who works in Orange, tells this story on Monday from a room in the JW Marriott Los Angeles Hotel high above the Nokia Theatre in the L.A. Live entertainment complex.

In a few hours, Conradi, her friends and hundreds of fellow fans would gather in bleachers outside the theater to cheer actors Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and other stars of the movies as they arrived to walk the red carpet for the premiere of the fifth and final movie in the Twilight Saga.

That movie, "Breaking Dawn: Part 2," opened in theaters everywhere late Thursday night, and with it the final chapter in The Passion of the Twi-hards will be written, as a journey that started in 2005 with Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novel wraps up after four books and five movies worth of vampires and werewolves, romance and battles, love and undeath.

And we wondered: How will these fans who packed book stores and theaters on premiere nights, argued endlessly whether Team Edward or Team Jacob was most worthy of their love (and that of Bella), wrote fan fiction on websites, and elbowed aside skinny comic-book nerds at Comic-Con, how would they cope in the darkness after "Twilight"?

So we went out to meet a few of the fans, to talk them about what brought them into the "Twilight" family, and how life will change now that their stories are done.

THE 'SISTERHOOD'

When "New Moon," the second movie, premiered in 2009 Conradi had dived deep enough into the "Twilight" world to figure out how to attend the red carpet premiere. Around that time she also started a blog, the Twilight Sisterhood, and started meeting people from all over.

"We got a lot of girls who came together," Conradi says. "Most of us were a little bit older. And we all came together to get giddy and talk about the movies."

One of the women she met through her blog was Emma Preston, who lived in Runcorn, a suburb of Liverpool, in the United Kingdom. When the third movie, "Eclipse," was about set to arrive in 2010, Preston and Conradi were chatting about how much fun it would be to attend that red carpet event together.

"I'd always wanted to go to a big 'Twilight' thing," says Preston, 22, as she puts the finishing touches on a huge "Twilight" poster she and Conradi are making in the hotel room. But with not that much money, it didn't seem possible.

"Then she said, 'Well, I'll put you up,'" Preston says, and with that, the Internet friends met in real life as well, camping out together for a few nights before the premiere in order to snag a spot along the red carpet.

"You get to see (the actors) and get autographs," Conradi says of the appeal of those events. "All of that sounded so appealing, even for a 30-year-old."

Preston came back the next two years – this final premiere is her third in Los Angeles. Conradi's group this time also included Nandi Olowo, a 17-year-old from West Hills, who admits she's more of a Kristen Stewart fan than a Twi-hard in general, and Vicki and Natalie Figueroa, a mother and daughter from Whittier.

They all have stories about red carpets past. Preston, a tall woman, got a hug from Robert Pattinson, a shorter man, which ended up with his head on her chest like some darling baby boy. Olowo came to the "Eclipse" premiere with a sign that said "Kristen Be My BFF," which caught the eye of Stewart who then gave her a pair of tickets to the movie premiere. Natalie Figueroa, 16, skipped school for the premiere of "Breaking Dawn: Part 1" and got busted when she landed on TV and in OK! Magazine's coverage of the event.

Now, having camped out for three nights outside the Los Angeles Convention Center in a "Twilight" tent city of fellow fans, the hotel room their refuge for warming and cleaning up, the five were fixing their hair and makeup and posters and signs for one last "Twilight" premiere.

"Obviously, you're going to get the people who think you're incredibly insane," Conradi says of what it's like outside the community of "Twilight" fans. "All in all, the people who know me know it's a fun thing for me."

As for the end of all this?

"It's a little bittersweet," she says. "But you're going to have had so many good memories and amazing experiences along the way.

"Everything has to end, but at least it's on a good note."

FANS FAR AND WIDE

In the courtyard between the Marriott and the fenced-off red carpet and bleachers in front of Nokia, a shifting throng of "Twilight" fans flowed this way and that, most in constant motion in order not to be shooed along by well-dressed security guards trying to keep the walkways clear.

The murmur of foreign tongues offered evidence of the far-and-wide nature of "Twilight" fandom: England, Venezuela, Australia, Portugal, France and Mexico all were represented. From the United States we found fans from Wisconsin, South Carolina, Michigan and Connecticut to name just a few.

Jaqui Harpole came from San Diego to meet up with nine friends made online through a Facebook group called Twilight Moms Club. Like others, she initially didn't understand the fuss. Like most, once she dipped into that world she was gone.

"I had the DVD (of 'Twilight') for a couple of weeks before I watched it," Harpole says. "Within five minutes (of starting the movie) I was drawn in. I think I had it for two more weeks and I watched it every day."

The appeal? "Him being mesmerized by her, her jumping on (the vampire) bandwagon," she says.

Evelyn Schwartz, at 65 and from Greenville, S.C., was one of the older and most-traveled fans in the Facebook moms group. Her son gave her the book, not knowing what it was or would do.

"He didn't know it was going to start an obsession," Schwartz says. "I started reading it and I couldn't stop."

Her voice breaks and she goes silent for a moment as tears well up in her eyes. "And now it's over."

In that community of fellow fans, there are shared experiences, shared emotions, Schwartz says.

"My friends in town don't get it," she says. "You get around people like this so you can feel normal and not like the 'Twilight' freak in town."

For her, as for many we talked with, it's the love story that drew them in and kept them hooked.

"What did it was that it's kind of a love story that doesn't really exist," Schwartz says. "And for somebody who's at the other end (of life), you know it doesn't exist quite like that.

"It's just a sweet love story."

A FINAL GLIMPSE

On the far side of Chick Hearn Drive, in front of Staples Center, a smaller line of fans waited for the premiere from a less-advantageous perspective. Without the wristbands that campers snagged for access to the bleachers, they were left with more hopes than sightlines for the stars that would arrive in a few hours.

Erin Martin, 24, a recent transplant from Flowery Branch, Ga., brought a pillow to sit upon and a magazine to read while waiting for day to meet twilight.

"When I first heard about it I thought people were crazy," says Martin, who lives in Burbank but worships in Orange County at the Free Chapel in Irvine and Cottonwood Church in Cypress. "But I thought, 'OK, I'll give it a shot,' and I was hooked.

"I'm always up for a love story because I'm a girl, but it wasn't like all the other books," she says. "This was before all the vampire stuff came out."

Like many of the fans we met, she liked the books better than the movies, at least at first.

"I think the first movie, I was a little bit disappointed," Martin says. "I still liked it, but I think each movie got better."

Martin also shared a common fallback position for "Twilight" withdrawals, too. "The Hunger Games" books are very popular with this crowd, and the fact that there are two, maybe three more "Hunger Games" movies to come satisfies some part of their appetite for romantic fiction of a supernatural or post-apocalyptic bent.

Still, it won't be easy. Not now as the movie opens for general release, not a month from now when many of these fans say they'll have gone to the cinema well more than once to watch "Breaking Dawn: Part 2."

How does it feel now it's ending, we ask.

"Oh, I don't want to talk about it!" Martin says, smiling ruefully. "I hate to be that person ... but I am that person who's going to be depressed at the end."